will mars appear as large as the moon to me in new york?

Question

there is an email going around syaing that mars will look as big as the moon on aug 27th and i just want to kno if its true becuase i think it would be really cool if it did

Answer 1

Not in New York, not in New Dellhi, not in New Zealand. It will never look as big as the Moon from anywhere on earth,

The only place from where they would look the same size as one another is in space,

When Mars next comes close: What you do is, if the Mars-Earth distance is 40 million miles, then you and the Starship Enterprise need to position yourselves 8 million miles from the Moon and 32 million miles from Mars. Then they will look the same size as each other, Except it will be the Moon that looks as small as Mars always does, not Mars that looks as big as the Moon always does when close-up to us..

This is a Baron Von Muchausen Fairy Story that is doing the rounds. It is a mischievous hoax, and it seems to have taken a lot of people in, One answerer in response to a similar question asking if a Moon-sized Mars was true or not, wrote "I think it must be true, as I keep on hearing this everywhere."

That only demonstrates that people are gullible and don't check this out for themselves, it doesn'r make it true. Dr Goebbels would have been proud of the hoaxers as they demonstrate his theory of propaganda that if you repeat a lie or disinformation often enough, people will start to believe it is true.

If you know George Orwell's novel,1984, the same cynical view is taken: The Minstry of Truth, Minitruth in Newspeak, spreads the lie that we have always been at war with EurAsia and that EastAsia is our ally and people soon forget that the position till recently was that we were at war with EastAsia and EurAsia was our ally.

How Should We Respond If We Get One Of These E-Mails?

In general. I take the view about e-mails from unknown senders: If it sounds too good to be true, then it almost certainly isn't true!

Central to the hoax is the Baron Von Munchausen story that Mars will look as big as our Moon. That can easily be demonstrated to be false, disappointing as it may be that it is false.

The boax is based on a gross distortion of what happened in 2003 (see the CNN News story below).

People are so impressionable, they will believe what a complete stranger says, rather than check the facts for themselves,

Which would you rather believe: an anonymous, unsolicited e-mail or the official NASA website?

I went to NASA's Kids Website which told me:

"View in 2006
Mars begins the year as a moderately bright orange star in the constellation Aries. It will grow fainter through the end of summer, when it will disappear in the Sun's glare. Mars will re-emerge in the morning sky in late December. In March, it will pass quite close to Aldebaran, the star that marks the “eye” of Taurus, the bull. Mars and Aldebaran will look like twins, with near-identical color and brightness."

You don't need to be a genius to work out that if it is getting fainter it is getting further away, and if it is disappearing into the sun's glare that can only be because it is on the far side of the sun from us i.e. Mars' position in its orbit is 180 degrees away from our position in our orbit and we are pretty well the maximum possible distance apart in August 2006.

If you know (and you can easily look this up) that the Martian Year is 1.88 Earth Years then again you don't have to be a genius to work out that the one time it WON'T be near to us is an exact number of twelvemonths since the last time it was close to us in August 2003, We will be in roughly the same place as we were 3 years ago, but Mars will only have done approx 1,6 orbits (1.5957 in fact) around the sun in that time, which explains why it is now on the far side of the sun and at about the farthest distance away it gets,

The absurd idea that Mars could possibly look the same size as the Moon can easily be refuted. At its closest approach it is 35 million miles away, whereas the Moon averages 238,000 miles away i.e. the distances are in ratio >140:1.

The diameters are in ratio 2:1 however (Mars has a diameter of 6780 kms and the Moon of 3474 kms) and so the areas of the discs they present to the naked eye are in ratio 4:1 (pi R^2: pi r^2, where R = 2r)

So, think about it: how can the number of arc seconds that Mars' disc presents to the naked eye possibly be the same as the number of arc seconds that the Moon's disc presents?

If the disc is 4 times the size of the Moon's disc, Mars would have to be only four times as far away as the Moon, i.e. only a million miles away, for that to happen.

and

(a) that never happens

(b) If it did happen, you'd soon know about it as giant tidal waves caused by Mars' gravity would sweep the Earth, making the Tsunamai look like a Sunday School picnic.

So not only can you look it up on reputable websites to discover this is nonsense, you can also work it out for yourself that it must be nonsense.

Much closer to the truth is that next March Mars will look about the same size and brightness as Aldebaran, in Taurus, the 13th brightest star in the sky, And they are both red. They will be a matched pair, but Mars and the Moon will never be one.

HERE IS THE STORY CNN CARRIED IN 2003

Earthlings revel in Mars close-up
Planetary approach is nearest in 60,000 years
By Richard Stenger
and Jeordan Legon
CNN
Thursday, August 28, 2003

The last time the red planet was this close to Earth 60,000 years ago, man lived in caves.

No wonder when Mars and Earth synchronized their orbits a few minutes before 6 a.m. EDT Wednesday -- bringing them closer to each other than at any time in recorded history -- thousands of people around the globe went outside to take a peek.

"Knowing that this is once in a lifetime that I can see another planet with the naked eye, yeah, it's great," said Rebecca Horton, a stargazer from Sydney, Australia.

Astronomers say Mars, five times closer now than six months ago, is about 34.6 million miles away, making it the brightest nighttime object except the moon.

"It is possible to get some fairly close encounters every few years," said amateur astronomer Paul Shallow. "It does come around, but not this close."

But with the far-away planet getting so close, some hopeful watchers felt gypped by Mother Nature.

In Oakland, California, where hundreds of space fans paid $11 to attend the Chabot Space & Science Center's "Mars Mania Costume Party," clouds rolled in along with night sky Tuesday. Mars was fogged out, and there were no refunds.

But the good news is that Mars will remain a stunning nighttime attraction for weeks. Most sky watchers can see the planet, presently in the constellation Aquarius, in the southeastern sky soon after sunset, high overhead during the midnight hours and in the southwestern sky before sunrise.

Backyard telescopes may coax features out of the reddish, orange blur, including dark, mottled streaks, which inspired scientists of past centuries to envision intricate canals and advanced Martian civilizations.

The rare configuration of 2003 has stoked renewed, albeit not as fanciful, interest in Mars, which on average cruises 50 million miles farther from the sun than Earth does.

About every 26 months, the two planets pass relatively close to one another, during periods now known as opposition.

What makes this one noteworthy is that Mars, which follows an extremely elliptical or egg-shaped path, is currently at it closest point to the sun during its orbit.

Those two conditions, along with a few obscure celestial variables, have produced an astronomical chance of a lifetime, or several lifetimes actually.

Mars won't pass closer to Earth until 2287, according to astronomers.

Besides awing the curious, the alignment has motivated numerous governments to dispatch missions to the red planet.

Taking advantage of the shorter trip distance, two U.S. and two European probes set off earlier this year, all to arrive at the end of the year.

"Mars fever has caught, not only for amateur astronomers, who are getting their best look at the planet ever and that we'll ever have in our life, but also for professionals, as you know, with the [NASA] Mars Rovers and other spacecraft that are en route," said David Eicher, editor of Astronomy magazine."

Answer 2

Geez. A little common sense here. Mars is on average 40 million miles away. It's not going to fire up its rocket engines for an interplanetary trip. It's orbiting the sun like it always has, same as the Earth. Yeah, it would really be cool to see Mars from a distance of half a million miles, but so would seeing Betelgeuse going supernova. As a Red Giant carbon star, it's ready to pop. If it already popped 427 years ago, we're going to be in for a big surprise any day now. Of course, it could take another million years to explode, an eye-blink in stellar time. It just might fry the Earth, from a distance of 2,562,000,000,000,000 miles (2.5 quadrillion miles). At minimum, there sure wouldn't be such a thing as night-time on Earth for a few months. Hot stuff!

Answer 3

No, it's a very, very large chainmail rumor.

SpaceDaily got the message and had an article about it a while back. Mars will never appear any bigger than a rather bright star. In fact, a few years ago, Mars was the closest that it will be within the next 60,000 years or so - and it was still merely a point of light to the naked eye.

Answer 4

Mars will never appear like the Moon due to the large differences in distance between both the celestial bodies. It does not matter whether you are in New York or any part of the world! For more discussions on astronomy, you could visit astrowhiz on Yahoo Groups.

Answer 5

Gee, how long is this stupid thing going to go on.

Please read something about astronomy. If you knew even the slightest thing about the arrangement of the planets, you would know that none of them ever appear to the naked eye bigger than a point of light, like a star.

With a small telescope Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will show a small disk.

Venus even shows phases like the moon.

You will see Jupiters bands, 4 of its moons, Saturn's rings with a small telescope. However, you need quite some magnification to see any detail on Mars.

Answer 6

No this is physically Impossible, unless of course Mars changed its orbit and suddenly moved millions of miles closer to earth

Answer 7

It's not true. Read the link I am providing below for details.

Basically the email is a lie that stupid people forward around without thinking.

Answer 8

No -- not even close. It will appear as a bright point of light, but there will not be a discernable disk unless you look at it through a telescope of some kind.

Answer 9

Blow a balloon and colour them with the mars texture. Let them go to the sky. Walla, finally you can see the huge mars with your naked eyes so huge.

Answer 10

Haven't heard that one. Sounds pretty unlikely.

Answer 11

no are u 5 or somthin?